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Show in my father's house/ 46 emphasis on Christian love in our household. The more dominant women strutted and thrived, for they stood with impunity on 'the letter of the law' --a typifying attitude for our Old Testament culture. Some wives pecked all the others, some pecked only those more insecure than themselves, some pecked no one, and some lacked energy to even scratch, let alone peck. One day I played near the garden with Leora, one of Aunt Suzie's thin, sickly children. Because my father didn't believe in immunizations -- "Their effect on the human organism is incalculable," he would say -- some of his children sniffed and measled and mumped their way through childhood. Others, like myself, basked in perpetual health. The mothers said Aunt Rachel's children were sickly and small because she had them so close together they missed out on nourishment both before and after being born. Suddenly, Leora began to cry, her tears falling into our mud pies. "What's the matter?" I asked. Leora snuffled, wiped her nose on her arm and squinted at me through thick glasses. Then she got up. I followed her into the big empty barn and up the loft-ladder. "I miss my mother," she mumbled as we threaded through the hay-bales. We settled against the scratchy stacks. My father had said we shouldn't play here, that the hay could fall and smother us. But Leora was crying. |